About This Book

Home is where the heart is. Whether your home is an apartment, a house, or a condo — rented or owned — the 101 stories in this book, all about the place you call home, will warm your heart. You will find joy, laughter, and inspiration in this collection of stories about cooking, family meals, decorating, remodeling, repairing... everything we do to make a home.

More from Chicken Soup for the Soul

Based on Chicken Soup for the Soul: Home Sweet Home by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Amy Newmark

Your home is your haven, and often your favorite place. But no matter where you call home — an apartment, a condo, or a house — what really makes it your home is the people you love and the memories you create. Here are five tips from Chicken Soup for the Soul: Home Sweet Home on making any place your own home sweet home.

1. A favorite possession can make any place a home. With frequent moves — a dozen places in as many years — Joelle Jarvis needs to create a sense of stability for her young son. She does that with her collection of StoryPeople wall art. The first thing Joelle does when they move to a new place is put up those colorful pieces, gifts from family and friends that remind them of special occasions. Even though most of their belongings are in storage, the StoryPeople pieces stay with them. "They become our anchor, our familiar surroundings (thankfully very portable) and confirmation that this new place is ours," Joelle writes. "It amazes me how such simple things can create so much warmth and a sense of security."

2. Listen to your heart. On a road trip from Texas to Arizona, Miki Butterworth and her husband drove through Sedona with plans to continue on to Phoenix. But once they hit Sedona, they stopped. They immediately fell in love with the area, sensing they belonged there. And they never looked back. They returned home to settle things and prepare for their move — selling their home, closing Miki’s business, and finding a new home in Sedona. It all happened with ease and within a few months. "Life had been hard for us, and we knew we were finally home," Miki writes. "And Sedona just came to us. Wrapped and ready."

3. You never move away from your memories. When Logan Eliasen and his family prepared to move from his childhood home, the teenager was not happy. He didn’t want to leave the house he loved that held so many memories. "How could we just pick up our lives and leave behind everything that happened here?" he writes. But then Logan realized he wasn’t leaving his memories behind — they moved with him. "It was still sad to leave that place we had loved so much behind," Logan writes. "But we had our memories tucked inside our hearts. That’s what mattered."

4. Homeownership requires a sense of humor. When Ken Lynch saw his two-year-old daughter excitedly pointing to the toilet and exclaiming, "Poo!" he was thrilled she had mastered toilet training. That made fixing their only toilet all the more important when it clogged not long after. So Ken worked to clear it and tried removing the bowl. But it exploded, sending debris all over the bathroom! Then he saw the source of the clog — his daughter had flushed a number of random items. "And, grinning insanely up at me, a little plastic Winnie the…" he writes. "My daughter clapped her hands and excitedly squealed, ‘Pooh!’" Sometimes you just have to laugh.

5. Don’t be afraid to call a professional. A competent handywoman, Risa Nye felt confident she could fix a damaged piece of her garage door by herself. After removing the dented metal piece and buying its replacement, she got to work. New piece in hand, she pushed the button to open the garage door. And then Risa realized her mistake — the missing piece of metal track, currently in her hand — served a critical function. Without it, the door swayed and the wheels popped out of the track. The garage door swayed dangerously on two wire strands. She immediately called in a professional, who charged her an emergency rate, but easily put the door back in place, working perfectly. Risa left his greasy fingerprints on the white garage door as a "a reminder that some things are harder than they look."